My internal countdown has determined I have 13:23:45 minutes left. Finding Sonic is proving to be harder than even I had imagined. Most people don't realize that Sonic leaves a faint trail behind him whenever he reaches supersonic speed. (Is it just me, or is that word one heck of an ironic coincidence?)
Most organics and even many robots cannot notice this trail the hedgehog leaves behind; it is astonishingly faint and subtle. I'm sure it's the stealthiest thing that Sonic has ever left behind in his life; everything else he does makes it look like a twister hit the place whenever he leaves the premises.
Even so, after the countless years I have spent tracking, studying, and fighting Sonic the Hedgehog, in many ways I know him better than he knows himself. My optics are so attuned to the unique path that Sonic's speed makes that by now, following his trail is as easy as tracking a herd of elephants.
This time, however, it is proving to be much more difficult to follow Sonic's trail than normal. His drastic reduction in size has made the path he creates even more subtle than before. On top of that, the trail seems to disappear at times and is amazingly erratic, even more so than normal.
I had not previously believed that it was possible for Sonic's trail to get more erratic and illogical; but even a highly advance android such as I am capable of being wrong, shocking as that may seem.
To summarize what I have been trying to say, it was taking a painstakingly long time to track Sonic the Hedgehog down; and time was a luxury I could not afford. And not simply because of Zombie's threatened rampage; the longer Sonic remained in this jungle, the more likely it was that some hostile animal would get to him before I did.
On the other hand, if I left Sonic's trail, not only might I not find him, but I might lose the trail altogether, forcing me to go back to the clearing. If that happened, there would be no hope of finding Sonic in time.
After analyzing my choices, I finally decided that I should leave the trail. The odds of my catching up to Sonic by following this tricky and deceitful path of his was astronomical. My only chance was that I did, in fact, know as much about the way Sonic the Hedgehog thinks as I thought I did.
Strange. Under normal circumstances, I had always known that I could find Sonic with little or no trouble. It had been the subsequent battle with him that had worried me. Now it was a stark reversal: I knew that if I found Sonic, there was a high probability that he could come back with me willingly. It was finding him that was the problem. Yet another ironic twist that, should I still be functioning after this was over, I would no doubt find highly amusing.
11:53:07 minutes remained. I had come upon some ancient ruins and pulled up short. If my memory served, there was a 95.5 percent chance that Sonic the Hedgehog was somewhere in the ruins. Another lesser known fact about the cobalt blue creature was that Sonic loved, loved, loved to explore ancient ruins. He was not a treasure hunter; he rarely, if ever, took anything out of the sites he explored. Sonic was not a material person. He simply liked to see what was inside unknown regions. Find out what kind of mysteries they obtained. Purposely spring traps to see if it would turn out to be something neat that he would have to outrun. Things like that.
This love of exploring hard-to-reach areas was the singular reason that Sonic was so amazingly good at finding Chaos Emeralds before the doctor. The emeralds almost always returned to ruins or damp caves after they spread out whenever Sonic used all seven at once. Eggman never made the connection; and I never informed him of it, because if he's so all-fired smart he should be able to figure it out himself.
If I knew Sonic the Hedgehog, he would have gone into the ruins. If I didn't know him, the world was toast. I don't know if you've ever had to rely on your knowledge of someone else in order to save the entire planet, but trust me. The feeling is decidedly unpleasant.
Holding my proverbial breath, I swooped down and scanned the entryway for Sonic's trail.
Yes! It was faint, but it was quite apparent that Sonic had entered the ruins. And quite recently, too. This discovery not only gave me a faint chance of saving the planet, but also—and perhaps more importantly—allowed me to keep my bragging rights on how well I knew Sonic the Hedgehog.
Now all I have to do is scour the miles of ancient ruins, find Sonic, and get him back to Zombie in exactly 9:59:36 minutes. Extremely close, but doable.
I entered the ruins and realized that here, Sonic's trail branched off in several different directions. Apparently, once inside, the toddler had run up and down and sideways and beside and behind and every other which way he could think of in order to see the inside of the building. This would make finding him a good deal more difficult; I would now have to guess at which pathway he was currently on and hope I found him soon.
I felt a strong, powerful object somewhere in the distance down the path to my immediate left. I decided that would be my first path; one of Sonic's trails led down it, and besides, perhaps the pull of the item—more than likely a Chaos Emerald—would have attracted Sonic, as well. Or perhaps he had stopped to stare at it because it was shiny.
Sonic always liked to stare at shiny things, even before he'd been infantized.
I went down the pathway and eventually found myself in a large inner chamber with a large pedestal in the middle. Lying in the pedestal was the silver/white Chaos Emerald, but Sonic was nowhere to be found.
I sighed and looked around. The room was a dead end, but I saw that Sonic's trail led to a wall at the far end of the wall and stopped cold. There did not seem to be a trail leaving the room. I walked over to the wall and inspected it. One of the bricks was an odd color; a lighter texture than the others. I pressed my hand on it and a section of the wall opened up, revealing a small, closet-like area with a small blue hedgehog curled up inside it.
"Sonic," I called.
The toddler's eyes, which showed redness and wet streaks that were sure signs of tears, opened quickly and he saw me. A look of pure joy crossed his face and he rushed to me, throwing his arms around my midsection.
"Shiny Sonic!" the Toddler gushed happily. "You foundid me! I thought I was lostest for ever ever."
"I would never let you get lost forever," I stated simply. "Now, we must go back home. Zombie misses you terribly and wants you to come back."
Sonic nodded. "I wanties Ombie, too," he said matter-of-factly. "I is go give him presents."
Before I could stop him, Sonic ran to the pedestal and grabbed the Chaos Emerald. "See? Is pwetty wock, an' is jus wike Ombie! All wite!"
Sonic was so busy staring at the white Chaos Emerald that he didn't notice that the pedestal was starting to sink behind him. I did, however. I kicked my turbo boosters to full gear and grabbed Sonic, pulling him out of the way as the ground under him cracked and fell, forming a deep abyss. A giant, rocklike hand reached up from it, and a Guardian appeared.
It was nearly as big as the entire state of Texas, give or take a few miles. OK, actually, it couldn't have been bigger than a ten story building, but that was still extremely large. Much larger than any living rock had any right to be. Although, come to think of it, rocks don't have much business being alive, when you come right down to it.
In spite of the impossibleness of its height and life, the Rock Guardian looked around, zeroing in on his target: An adorably cute hedgehog toddler, with an incriminating Chaos Emerald clutched in his paws.
I zoomed out of the way just as the Guardian roared and raised his fist, smashing the area where Sonic and I had been mere moments before. I set Sonic down in a small crevasse so I could fight. My ion blasters activated as I turned to the Guardian.
"If you injure this child," I told him coldly, "it will be over my rusted hull!"
The Guardian seemed to agree with these terms, because he raised his fists again and tried to flatten me into paste. I zoomed out of the way again and fired my blasters. He merely absorbed the blasts and kept coming.
The shock of seeing him absorb a bloody ion blast made me pause for a fraction of a second. It was just enough time for him to smack me with the flat of his hands.
It was just a glancing blow; had he hit me head on he would have smashed my body to bits. As it was, however, he caused my warning sirens to go off and my body to start smoking heavily. My left rocket booster suffered the most damage; it was spluttering and barely functional.
I reeled from the blow, and cleared my vision, in time to see the Guardian raise his fists again. This time, I managed to roll out of the way, but only barely. I felt the wind come off his hands even as I rolled and forced my protesting rocket boosters to lift me back into the air.
Once in the air, I scanned the Rock Guardian, looking for any potential weaknesses. I saw that there was a weak point in the middle of its forehead, but it would be difficult for me to attack it. It would require split-second timing, and with the damage my body had taken, I was unsure if I was capable of performing such a feat.
However, I would do it. The image of what this thing wanted to do to Sonic was more than enough incentive to do what had to be done.
Activating my ion cannons once more, I flew as close as I could get to the Guardian, and, at the last possible second, I shot him right between the eyes.
The Guardian squealed and stumbled back. Then he clasped his hands together and smashed the ground under me with all his might.
Had I a mouth I would have smirked; apparently, this Guardian had a primitive intelligence that kept him from realizing that you cannot hit a flying target by smashing the ground under him. I lined up another shot and hit him again.
The Guardian screamed, although it seemed to be more in anger than in actual pain, and looked directly at me. He unceremoniously clapped his hands together, creating a shockwave that came right at me. I was lining up another shot at the time; that fact and the fact that my rocket boosters were only functioning at 62 percent capacity kept me from getting out of the way.
The shockwave hit me head on, sending me flying backwards out of control until the wall stopped my backwards momentum. I had thought my internal warning alarm had been going off before; now it was positively deafening. My systems analysis was grim: I had completely lost all use of my right arm, my internal battery was running on backup power, and my use of my rocket boosters had gone down another 24 percent. Above me, the Rock Guardian clasped his hands together again and poised to smash me with all his might. And in my condition, I would be unable to dodge him in time.
I cringed, awaiting my inevitable fate, when a small blue ball hit the Rock Guardian on the side of the head. It was not damaging to the creature; but it was distracting.
The blue thing bounced off and landed at the edge of the crevasse with an 'oomph!' When it stopped moving, it was revealed to be a little Sonic the Hedgehog, still partially curled from his ineffective spin dash. The toddler rubbed his head, where a good-sized lump was forming, and glared at the Rock Guardian.
"You is bad!" Sonic informed the Guardian. "You is need time outs!"
Apparently, the Rock Guardian was not fond of the idea of a time out; for it turned its attention to Sonic, raising his palm to smash the child.
This, for the briefest amounts of time, left me with a clear shot to its forehead.
Mustering the last of my strength, I commanded my failing body to shoot the forehead area one last time. A single ion beam was the result, hitting the Rock Guardian squarely on the forehead.
The Guardian gave an agonizing shriek and fell back into the abyss. And this time, it did not come back up.
In an instant, Sonic was beside me, clutching his white Chaos Emerald, not bothering to stop the tears that were running freely down his cheeks. "You is hurt?" he asked, barely above a whisper.
I did not bother to answer; instead I was checking my body's ability to function, as well as the amount of time remaining.
We had 1:07:59 minutes left. And with my rocket boosters only performing at 38 percent maximum capacity, there was simply no way I could make it back to the hideout with Sonic in time.
I had failed.